Many years ago I read somewhere what Waters thought about the PF Gilmour-area: he said something like, it almost sounds like Dire Straits (in a bad way, he was very negative). I'll try to find it, I think it was somewhere in the early 90's.
It's usually negative, even Guy and other DS members talk not good about that era. It was the start of the digital recordings and they were experimenting, it sounded great for that time, as it was cool, but years later they realised that it didn't sound that good, and they went back to analogue recordings, mixed with digital.
It annoys me when this early digital recording era is criticised. That is not only evocative of the era but also extremely innovative too, and something DS with Neil Dorfsman were at the cutting edge in. They should be proud of it. I secretly think Guy is but pretends he isn't to promote the sonic quality of the most recent or upcoming album.
I don't like most of the music did in that era. It sounds artificial, there is something about that sound that is like empty to me. Same happens with that horrible dry drums sound so typical from the 80's. It's something that apparently Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins are guilty for. Experimenting for a Gabriel record, while Phil was playing drums, Gabriel did some weird mic positioning and started to push buttons, and they find "a sound", what would be called "gated reverb", and that awful sound is on almost everything recorded at the 80's... Even the DS BIA has some of that drums sound, like in "So far away" or "money for nothing", the drums sounds very unnatural, too dry, like they were not real drums...
Yes, it was innovative, but that doesn't means it was good. Come one, just look at the fashion hair cuts of that era!
